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Other suspects ruled out in McCabe murder case

By Lisa Redmond, lredmond@lowellsun.com

Updated:
01/24/2013 06:34:52 AM EST

WOBURN -- While the defense suggests that investigators ignored other suspects so they could pin the murder of 15-year-old John McCabe on Michael Ferreira, a retired Tewskbury police officer testified that after the arrest of a man in 1974, police immediately looked to see if that man could be a suspect in the McCabe murder.

In Middlesex Superior Court on Wednesday, retired Tewksbury Deputy Police Chief Walter Jamieson testified that after Richard Santos' arrest for assaulting and raping a teenage girl in Tewksbury, investigators made it a priority to compare the allegations against Santos with the McCabe murder years earlier.

"No link was found," Jamieson testified.

Michael Ferreira, 59, of Salem, N.H., is on trial charged with first-degree murder for the Sept. 26, 1969 murder of the Tewksbury teen. Prosecutors allege that on the night of the murder, Ferreira and co-defendants Walter Shelley and Edward Allan Brown, all Tewksbury teens at the time, kidnapped McCabe as he walked home from a school dance at the Knights of Columbus in Tewksbury.

The three men are accused of tying a rope around McCabe's ankles, wrists and neck, and putting tape over his eyes and mouth, then leaving him in a vacant field in Lowell to teach him a lesson for flirting with Shelley's girlfriend at the time, prosecutors allege. When they returned about an hour later, McCabe was dead. The state Medical Examiner's Office ruled the boy died from asphyxiation by strangulation.

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While Ferreira and Shelley are charged with murder, Brown cut a deal with prosecutors. In exchange for his testimony against Ferreira and Shelley, who will go on trial at a later date, Brown will plead guilty to manslaughter and serve no jail time.

In court on Wednesday, Jamieson testified that in the Santos case, the victim told police she was hitchhiking and was forced into a car by a man with a gun.

He drove her back to his motel in Tewksbury, where he brutally beat her with the gun, repeatedly raped her, handcuffed her wrists and tied her ankles and neck with rope, then put tape over her eyes and mouth. Santos then dumped her body after choking her into unconsciousness.

At first the victim was fearful of talking to police, Jamieson said, because Santos had handcuffs, a handgun and displayed a badge. She thought he was a police officer. Santos was later convicted of assault and rape.

McCabe wasn't beaten, no weapon or handcuffs were used, and he wasn't sexually assaulted.

Jamieson testified that the investigating officer "couldn't find any connection"' between the two cases.

State Police Detective Lt.Thomas Sullivan testified that when he went to Ferreira's Salem, N.H., home in 2003 to re-interview him as part of reopening the cold case, Ferreira denied any knowledge of how McCabe was killed.

Ferreira told Sullivan that Shelley, who was 17 at the time, and 13-year-old Marla Shiner were dating back then, and that "Walter probably killed McCabe," Sullivan testified.

Sullivan was the last witness for the prosecution.

Defense-paid forensic pathologist Dr. Thomas Andrew testified that after reviewing reports, documents and photos from the McCabe murder, he wasn't hogtied when he died, disputing the prosecution's theory of how McCabe died.

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